To each it's own. It's a matter of preferences, so if people prefer JSU it's their own right.
But I will have to try and counter the part about about JSU being FNV should have been from the start. Because JS Mod makes the game harder on purpose.
I already mentioned the change of the Implant GRX from 2 and 3 to 3 and 5 uses, that allows a player to have the same amount of uses in one perk in JSU as it would have with two perks in JS Mod and the second rank allows almost twice the uses per day in JSU as it would in JS Mod. Once again, Implant GRX is quite a OP ability, allowing almost the twice uses of it already makes the game easier.
I will just go through the differences in the change log and point out why some already change the intention and difficulty of the original mod:
JSU alters the effects of consumables from JS Mod. It changes the effects of those consumables to a script as to "correct an oversight", this "oversight" is that in FNV consumables have their benefits increase with the character's skills (survival for food and medicine for healing consumables), but the game also increases the negatives from consuming these things with higher character skills. So when you eat something that has a negative and a positive effect, both those effects will be increased when your character's related skill increases too. At first glance, this seems to be an oversight, but it makes sense it wasn't "fixed" in JS Mod, because it makes the game harder, and it makes using consumables have drawback that are proportional to the benefits (both increase with the skills). Removing the increase of penalties with skill level makes using consumables way more beneficial in JSU compared to JS Mod. It really changes the difficulty already (specially in Hardcore mode, since the preferred way of healing in that mode is using food items).
Changing the Stimpak Sickness duration from 120s to 30s... That's reducing a penalty's duration by 4 times... 4 bloody times! That means that you can use Super Stimpaks and only have to wait 30 seconds to lose the STR and AGL penalties instead of 2 minutes... Another "fix" that alters the balance of JS Mod to make it way easier.
Changed the Homemade and Expired Stimpaks use when having the Fast Metabolism perk (so it works like the other Stimpak versions). Again, making the change to how these two stimpak versions work with the perk seems logical, after all the "good" versions of the stims work that way, why would the weaker versions not work like that too? The answer is once more... Balance. JS Mod made these weaker versions work like this with that perk because they are supposed to be weaker and not depended on for tough situations. By making them have a stronger healing effect instead of said effect last longer is defeating the purpose from the original mod. It's turning a healing item that is supposed to be weak and not good for hard battles into a somehow useful item for those same hard battles (20% more healing in shorter time is way more useful than 20% less healing but the healing effect lasting 20% longer). Expired and Homemade Stims are supposed to be used after a battle, not to be relied on in the heat of a tough situation, but that simple "fix" already remove the intention and lowers the difficulty of the original mod.
Adds recipes for all raw meat. Fair enough, makes sense. Although it also reduces the difficulty of the original mod by a tiny bit. Because now the player has more options for turning consumables into better ones.
Adds armor repair kits that can also be crafted. Fair enough, makes sense since the game has weapon repair kits. Also helps destroy more the already bad economy in FNV. Not having armor repair kits forces the player to have to spend other equivalent armors to repair the ones they use, pay vendors to repair them or use the Jury Rigging perk (a level 14 perk that requires 90 repair skill) that allows to repair their armors with any armor of the same category. Without the Jury Rigging perk, some armors are impossible to repair unless the player uses caps, and since the price of repairs is dependent on the condition needed to be repaired and the price of the armor, it makes the player have to spend quite a few caps depending on the body armor/headgear/face gear combination that needs to be repaired (the character can equip up to three pieces of armor at the same time, depending on the type of slot that armor takes, body, head, face, full face). So repairing your armors is usually more expensive than repairing your weapons (unless you play sneaky sniper, since you will use your weapons a lot more than you will be getting hit).
This armor repair kit also repairs all the armors worn at that time, which means it can be exploited by the payer equipping several pieces of armor at once and get them all repaired at once and quite cheap (for example, the character is equipped with a body armor and a full head helmet, the body armor needs repairs but the helmet doesn't, so the player can equip an open faced helmet and a mask like the Rebreather and use the repair kit, voilá, it repaired all of the three at once and at a super cheap price).
This addition might make sense, since there are weapon repair kits, but it unbalances the game and makes it much easier.
Added Ice Cold Sunset Sarsaparilla, which makes the drink have a more powerful healing effect. Makes it easier.
It marginally increases the weight of some items (usually 0 to 0.2, 0 to 0.5, 0.2 to 0.25 or 0.5, etc.) which increases the difficulty, but then it also decreases the weight of other stuff by quite not marginally (Grilled Mantis weight decreases from 1 to 0.4, other stuff from 1 to 0.5, from 1 to 0.25, etc.). In the end it all cancels each other out so it end up pretty much the same.
It reduced the healing effects of drinks like Nuka Cola varieties and Sunset Sarsaparilla, but if flagged them as food items, so now survival skill will affect them, and if you have a high skill, they will end up healing more than the flat value they had before (with survival of 40/50 they are already healing the same as the flat value and with max survival skill they will be healing almost twice as much). This is worse with the Sarsaparilla, which he only nerfed the duration of the healing effect, from 12 seconds to 10 seconds, so in the base mod we would heal 12 HP over 12 seconds and in the JSU you will heal 10 HP over 10s, but that is only if you have a survival skill lower than 30. With only a survival skill of 30 you already have double healing for just 2 seconds less (you heal 20HP in 10s instead of 12HP in 12s) and with max Survival skill this drink is healing almost 5x more but for only 2 less seconds (you will be healing 50HP in 10s against the 12HP healed in 12s from the base mod). Making the game easier once again.
Added a small amount of DR to all light armors. Now they reduce more damage taken (I don't know how much is a small amount, so it can be anything from 1 to 10 or more). Game is easier.
Added armor effects to a range of armor and clothing. The reasoning for this change is because the original mod added some effects to raider and mercenary armor. But the reason it added those effects in the first place was to boost those enemies a bit since they are usually quite weak. Adding bonuses to a range of other armor and clothing will usually only be useful for the player, because then they can benefit more from those bonuses (specially since the PC has access to perks while the enemies don't). This makes the game easier.
Replaced AGL reductions on apparel with Sneak reductions. The reasoning was that the base mod did this for a few armors, so it's "finishing what was started", except it made sense for those armors to have Sneak penalty, but not all of them. AGL penalty makes the game harder in general than Sneak penalty (AGL affects AP. Also affects the speed of reloading, holster and drawing a weapon).
This is already an enormous wall of text and I didn't even reached half of it. So I will cut it short for the sake of everyone's sanity's (mine included). I will just mention a few general things and be done with it.
It also made the game easier by adding new recipes, by allowing to craft/cook using more item varieties, by allowing some items to not be consumed while crafting using them. Added more items that can be used to repair some weapons (whet stones can repair bladed weapons now) Added several weapons to enemies but some of these weapons are quite valuable and they are in the hands of raiders that are easy to dispatch and get the loot, making it easier to increase your caps just by easily killing these enemies. Edited some weapons in a way that make the game easier (just check the weapons section almost all the points are about decreasing ammo used by half or increased damage or decreasing weapon weight, sometimes by half.), altered the XP reward values to the nearest 25 ending up giving more XP in the end, just, and I quote "to give nicer figures", added a few early game traders (which makes the game easier), and many other stuff.
I will mention that the mod does have several changes that make the game harder:
It reduces by half the healing of the items provided by the Them's Good Eatin' perk (Thin red paste, Thick red paste and Black blood sausage) not affected by the original mod (the original edits the Blood Sausage). It also nerfed the Gecko steak. Made it so placed Stimpaks can be the expired version (although it boosted these versions as mentioned before). Altered the bobby pins and lockpick skill values so bobby pins break easier and lockpicking is a bit harder (but reduced the time in between hacking attempts from 10s to 2s) and other stuff.
In the end, JSU makes the game much easier than JS Mod, it really doesn't feel the same vision for FNV as the original mod. I could go on and on about more changes but this already took too much time to write and no one will read even half of this post anyway...
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